1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to air cleaners, and more particularly, to an air cleaner operative proper to a purpose of use or an environment.
2. Background of the Related Art
In general, the air cleaner provides a comfortable room environment by carrying out a deodorization function for removing various smells in the room, and a dust collecting function for removing dust from the room. FIGS. 1 and 2 illustrate related art air cleaners, schematically.
As shown, the related art air cleaner is provided with a body 10 forming an exterior, various of filters, discharge fan 30, and a flow guide 40.
The body 10 is provided with an air inlet 11 in a lower front part thereof for drawing room air, and an air outlet 12 in a rear upper part thereof for discharging cleaned air.
The various filters are a plurality of dust collecting filters 21 for removal of various dusts, and a plurality of deodorizing filters 22 for deodorizing various smells, mounted in succession in a part the air inlet 11 is formed.
The discharge fan 30, mounted in rear of the filters 21 and 22, discharges the air drawn through the air inlet 11, and passed through the filters 21 and 22 to an outside of the body 10.
The flow guide 40, formed in a rear part of the body 10, guides the air passed through the discharge fan 30 to the air outlet 12 in the body 10.
Accordingly, upon putting the air cleaner into operation, the discharge fan 30 is rotated, so that room air is drawn into the body 10 through the air inlet, and passed through the filters 21 and 22 for dust collecting and deodorizing.
In this instance, the dust collection is made as the air passes through the dust collecting filters 21, and the deodorizing is made as the air passes the deodorizing filter 22 in rear of the dust collecting filters 21.
Cleaning of the room air is made as the air dust collected and deodorized therefrom passes the discharge fan 30, is guided by the flow guide 40, and discharged into the room through the air outlet 12.
However, the related art air cleaner has the following different problems in a filter mounting structure.
First, because the related art air cleaner passes air through all the filters in succession regardless of purpose of use or site, a lifetime of the filters is reduced.
For an example, if the air cleaner is used in a purpose of deodorization in, such as a kitchen, when air containing smell compositions passes the dust collecting filters unnecessarily, the dust collecting filters is contaminated without functioning properly, to shorten a lifetime of the dust collecting filters.
On the other hand, if the air cleaner is used in a site with much dust for cleaning room air, it is not necessary to pass the air with dust through the deodorizing filters. Despite of this, since the air passes through the deodorizing filter, a lifetime of the deodorizing filters is shortened unnecessarily. Particularly, the deodorizing filter is in general an activated-carbon filter, accumulation of dust makes the deodorizing performance poor, to drop a user's reliability of the device.
Second, since the related art air cleaner requires air to pass the plurality of filters, which causes flow resistance at the filters, a load on a fan motor (not shown) for driving the discharge fan increases, to increase a power consumption.